Gagged & Bound

Book excerpt: Barrister Trish Maguire tackles a thirty-year-old terrorism case when distinguished biographer, Beatrice Bowman, hires her to fight a libel claim by a new ennobled member of the House of Lords who says she misidentified him as one of the terrorists who killed a busload of young children. Meanwhile, Trish's old friend, Inspector Caro Lyalt, faces an impossible decision---blow the whistle that could end a colleague's career (and jeopardize her own), or do nothing and never forgive herself. In the running for a fantastic new job within the police force, she learns that a South London crime family is paying off her biggest rival. The villains gag and suffocate anyone who tries to expose their secrets. If the allegations are false, she loses all hope of this job or any other, but if they are true and she does nothing, she'll live with the guilt forever. Trish is caught in the middle. As she and Caro help each other find the information they need, Caro's top informant is shot. Then the body of a young woman turns up in a park, bound, gagged, and suffocated with all the trademarks of a mob killing. And someone is trying to use Trish's twelve-year-old brother to force her to drop her inquiry. Picking her way through the maze of lies and threats, she brings danger terrifyingly close to herself and the people she loves. In her seventh thrilling Trish Maguire mystery, Natasha Cooper explores the full destructive power of the wrong words spoken at the wrong time.